Sunday, July 16, 2017

On male stress

Most women think that men cling to traditional male roles because it benefits them. Certainly ascending a professional ladder offers more money, power and status than chugging along on a mommy track. But these perks come at a price. In a recent 15-year survey of married American men and women between the ages of 18 and 32, Christin Munsch of the University of Connecticut found that men typically reported being in the best health during the years they split the burdens of breadwinning with their partners. As these men assumed more financial responsibility relative to their wives, their health and wellbeing declined. Often they suffered from the worst health and the most anxiety when their wives were out of the labour force entirely.

There is no question that being the sole provider for one's family is stressful. It is almost laughable to compare the difference between being young, single, and unencumbered to being middle-aged, married with children, and responsible for everyone. The stress is constant and can only be mitigated, never eliminated. Even when one has more money than one needs, the strain of everyone constantly having a hand out and the decisions that necessitates creates an amount of stress.

But then, the way one builds up one's muscles is to stress one's body. This stress is not to be avoided, or lamented, but rather, utilized. It's also why married men tend to outperform men with fewer responsibilities and less stress.

Granted, one can no more handle too much stress than too much weight. An excess of either can literally kill a man. But that doesn't make it something to be feared, merely respected. Being a man is about more than living as long as humanly possible. And building a family is more than worth the price one pays for the privilege.

19 comments:

The fear of failure is extremely powerful, especially when you know you ARE your family's backup plan, NO contingencies.

Overeating, overdrinking, not enough sleep etc. Are definitely coping mechanisms you see all the time.

It still amazes me though that women fail to realize all that stress can be managed and dealt with effectively simply by being a supportive partner. In the home. Everyone's heard of supermoms. Well I know supersdads. These are dudes that maintain their health, rake in dough, and havs time for their families. The difference? A woman that doesn't try and cut a leg from them as soon as they walk through the door.

"A layman's definition of stress is: The belief that you don't have the resources necessary to deal with a problem."

"""Alphas Allow Others Their PlaceIt is perhaps here that the absolute worst misconception about alpha behavior is made. It is also one of the fastest ways to spot a beta trying to ape an alpha. One version of this attitude is "I'm the alpha, I get the best, you get the scraps." Another version is "Everything is mine and you have no place."

Realize humans are social animals. We need other humans in order to exist. The nature of the social hierarchy is two-fold. One is so the greatest number of people can 'get by' in order for the group/species to survive (it organizes and protects the group). Two is it allows individuals within that group a place of security to obtain what that individual needs in order to survive."""

"""Before you can understand what an alpha is, you first need to understand something about the nature of power. Namely: Power is granted to you by the group. You don't have power unless other people give it to you.

Here's the catch, the group gives you power on the condition that you look out for their needs. That's the deal. You get extra power to serve them. If you violate this trust then you will be stripped of your power by the group."""

"Basically Caesar [Milan]'s summation of an insecure alpha is a beta dog that is thrust into a leadership position. This dog lacks alpha attributes. Most of all it doesn't have the calm assurance of a true alpha. As such it is unstable and overly aggressive. An additional problem with this is other dogs in this situation also become unbalanced and aggressive."

All quotes taken from http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/alphabehavior.htm and rearranged for a more logical sequence.

Aeoli, to go with your description, happy, secure people want to see others be happy. Insecure, unhappy people don't like to see others be happy. Happy, secure men accept where in the social group they fall. The contest is not adversarial.

The stress of sole breadwinner is high when no amount of corner-cutting squeezes the bills into the monthly income, and and falls off rapid when income allows for the accumulation of resources.

Dr Helen does good work. Young white men reading stuff like her's and familiarizing themselves with marriage law and divorce proceedings and having a contingency plan for that so that they don't feel like killing themselves after losing their kids, which turns out are her kids according to the law, is advisable. Lifetime alimony warrants the OJ nuclear option.

Even when one has more money than one needs, the strain of everyone constantly having a hand out and the decisions that necessitates creates an amount of stress.

This.

As fewer and fewer men are able to become providers, more and more hands are going to be picking the pockets of the few who are. At some point these few men are going to realize the diminishing returns in being a provider and are going to just walk away from it all. The resulting collapse will be both epic and catastrophic.

liner ranter, nah. Lots of men speak of a "collapse" ...both epic AND catastrophic! Lol. More than enough males with the means to spawn. Remember polygamy is going to come back, big time. They'll legalize it and we'll see rich Afro-Orcs, Doodoo Black, Brown, Beige mysyery meats "Gold Chain" races spawning...Maybe the American Mormon people will embrace their formerly shuned breeding practice. People love to f*ck. Like rabbits. A collapse may come if we get a global super lethal pandemic or some catastrophic event, a little help from dear Mother Nature.

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Being the sole provider for my family is the best job ever. Is it stressful? Sure. Is it hard to be the one that must bring home the bacon? Yep. Does it suck sometimes? Absolutely. But carrying the burden of sole provider grounds a man's efforts and forces him to be more productive, more creative, and more diligent. He does not have the luxury to screw around. He has to be focused.

But there is nothing better than knowing you are feeding, clothing, and housing your wife and kids.

Before my current job I worked at a lasagna factory scraping cheese off floors and busting open boxes of frozen vegetables and loading them into machines. My first two kids were born while I worked there and we lived in a tiny little duplex. I worked long hours for little pay but my wife is frugal and even then we saved money. I was looking around for jobs more in line with my education and it took about three years before things panned out and I got my current job. I did not like work at the factory very much. The shift started at 4:30 and I was very tired/sore on my days off. But that is part of being a man: you do the job, no matter what the job is, to meet your obligations to your wife and children.

And even though I did not like it, that job and the things I learned there have been a continual blessing to me since.

The stress of providing for the family, but it's an accomplishment and a privilege to do it, especially when I see my sons growing into men. When my wife brings the boys to the office for lunch, my oldest son marches up to our CFO, looks him in the eye and gives him a nice firm handshake. Our CFO was shocked the first time this happened. He isn't used to eight year old boys doing that, but I told him I'm not raising barbarians , but men.